


Love And Peace Or Else

by MissEllaVation



Category: U2
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 16:01:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14060460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissEllaVation/pseuds/MissEllaVation
Summary: An utterly depraved piece of thinky-panky™ that takes place in 2002. Warning for young people: this fic contains a shocking reference to the late U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. Read at your own risk. Grown folks, have some personal/political conflict, some tender love, and some silliness, mostly toward the end. Who needs a plot? I dunno. It's something to do with love and power, and then saying "screw power." Or something.





	Love And Peace Or Else

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of things led me to write this. 
> 
> Thing One: Recently, our hero Bono had to apologize for misconduct that took place in the Johannesburg offices of ONE, the anti-poverty organization he helped found. We can assume that he’s not directly involved in the daily life of any particular office, but he is the most prominent founder, and also the one that people enjoy kicking around the most. So his apology and his offer to meet with the affected employees personally was met with suspicion. “How did he not know what was happening?” “He’s only apologizing because he couldn’t sweep it under the rug.”
> 
> I feel that people who see anti-poverty/anti-AIDS/pro-refugee activism as something nefarious are actually seeing their own reflections. They don’t have that kind of empathy, so they can’t imagine it in others. I think this attitude has dogged Bono for years.
> 
> Thing Two: I was taken aback a couple of years ago, when I still haunted certain U2 forums, to see someone dismiss the song “Love And Peace Or Else” as “just stupid.” Maybe that person didn’t like the bombastic, churchy-blues style music. Or maybe they didn’t like the lyrics, which deal with one of Bono’s pet themes: how can we work for peace in the world when we can’t even find peace here in our own home? The song hearkens back to the early days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, during which we heard a lot about reporters being embedded with troops in various places, and “boots on the ground,” and all of the empty phrases that make war into some abstract thing that has nothing to do with the rest of us. 
> 
> Only problem is, in this fic, that song does not exist yet. Oh well, I’m ganking the title anyway. It’s late 2002—I think. You guys know me by now: No research! Only feels! Anyway, according to my sketchy memory, Bono was busily encouraging then-president George W. Bush and our numbingly right-wing Congress to enact and fund what would become the very good but imperfect [PEPFAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Emergency_Plan_for_AIDS_Relief). Edge and the others are uncomfortable with this situation. 
> 
> "The princess who lives on the hill" is a Lou Reed reference. 
> 
> Important: likeamadonna has already written about this time period, more broadly, more exquisitely, and surely with more historical accuracy, in [The White Room.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9849653/chapters/22102604) You should go read it. #Bean
> 
> The following is the most ridiculous, protracted #ProteccBono thing I’ve ever spewed out. Edge POV. Thanks and sorry for all the notes.

I think it’s your smile that gets you in trouble. If certain people on the street are to be believed, you’ve slept with everyone from a Macedonian soap opera star to the Irish ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago—all because of the half-adoring, half-hungry smile you lay on everyone you meet. It makes for some interesting candid pictures. I’m sure paparazzi all over the world have contact sheets full of you looking bored or indifferent. They just don’t sell those shots to the tabloids.

But I’ve seen you struggle up out of sleep with the morning light harsh on your face. When you realize I’ve been watching, the smile I get is one of undiluted relief. You say _oh thank God, it’s you, you’re here_ , and you bury your face in my chest. So I imagine I must still be a bit important to you.

Tonight we’re together in your guest bedroom in New York. You won’t sleep with me in the bed you share with Ali, and maybe no one else on earth would understand this arrangement, but I do, because I’ve loved you both for most of my life. You’re in the bed by yourself, only half-undressed, under a silky scarlet duvet and a woolly pink blanket that looks like something Jordan or Eve used to drag around.

I’m in my night-owl mode, watching you from the armchair in the corner. Even asleep, you look exhausted. Your hair is too black against your skin. Your lips are moving. Maybe you think you’re still giving a speech. If I weren’t so tired myself, I would stand at the foot of the bed, brandishing a sword, guarding your rest.

God, you make me mad.

I’m here because of a series of phone calls, most of them from you to me. For the last one in the series I was sitting in my kitchen, afternoon sun streaming through the windows and a hot cup of tea in front of me. The TV was on, the sound off. World news on CNN, three shouty-heads in individual video rectangles, closed-captioning. The topic was Iraq. _Are there WMD’s? Should we attack them before they attack us?_

You were in Washington. You’d just had your picture taken with the president. “I need to talk to you, Edge,” you said. “Please meet me in New York?”

Your voice was raw; it snagged me like a hangnail. But you weren’t gonna get me like that. Not this time. “Look, I’m sorry, I just don’t feel like traveling right now.”

“Is it because—”

“It’s because I’m perfectly happy right here where I am, at home, and I don’t want to talk about—”

“Bush, I know. Come on Edge, even he knows he’s in over his head, and the people around him are deplorable Nixonians and oil industry bastards but—”

“I understand that you can find common ground with almost anybody, Bono. I lived through your charm offensive against Jesse Helms, didn’t I? That was pretty bad, but I guess you worked a mojo on him or something. _These_ people, though, are determined to have another pointless war on top of the war they’re already fucking up, and it just looks really, really bad to have you standing there next to Bush like you approve.”

“So you won’t stand next to _me_ , any of you, because you don’t want people to think U2 as a whole is contaminated.”

“That is _not_ what I was gonna say.” It was, though, only not in so many words. I’d been angry with you countless times before, for any number of reasons, but just then I really wanted to push your stubborn face in.

“Look, Edge. This is who’s in the White House right now. Nothing to be done about that. If I take the next few years off just because I have major disagreements with him on almost everything, we may not make any more progress on AIDS. You know what we’re up against. Real people will die. Real children.”

“Real people will die in Iraq. Real children.”

You barreled right past this. “He’s not an ogre in person, Edge. He’s a funny guy, and I think he knows he’s not qualified for the job.”

“Then he should step down.”

“But he’s serious about his faith and really, he’s on the verge of increasing aid to sub-saharan Africa in an unprecedented way—”

“You are not responsible for his redemption arc, Bono.”

“No, but I’m responsible for those sick mothers and infants. We all are. You know this. If Africa dies, it affects the whole world.”

This was when I almost slammed the phone down. I did tell you to fuck off. You were using that fucking prissy voice from the olden days, when you used to harangue the audience. _The God I believe in isn’t short of cash, mister!_

We both have children, Bono. It’s wrenching enough when they’re sick for even one night and are too young to understand why. I know you think about this all the time. You know, for example, that the Ethiopian famine was no different than the Irish famine. You don’t see any difference between African children and European children, and of course there isn’t any difference, but I think, for many people, time and distance confer a sense of separateness. Not for you. In your heart, you live not in Dublin or New York, but in the whole world. You’ve seen hunger, fear, and disease, and you’ve held those children in your arms.

Somehow none of this turns you cynical, which makes me want to throttle you. Which also makes me want to make love to you. You’re an angel, and I’m proud to know you. Honest to God I am. But.

“Look,” you said, having waited out my silence. “This will all be over soon. This administration is surely America’s nadir. No president could ever be worse than this, right? So let me just get through it. I promise, I will fix everything. I will make sure our fans know that I do not in any way support the invasion of Iraq.”

I think I just snorted into the phone.

“Please come meet me in New York. Please? My love? Just for the weekend?” You pitched your voice an octave lower. “I miss you, The Edge. Deeply.”

It was that one word, “deeply,” with all its implications, that finally got to me.

And so, here I am.

*

You hurled yourself at me, as you always do, before I could even set my bag down. I hadn’t slept at all during the flight. I kept thinking about the lecture I was going to give you. I also kept thinking about the various ways we could avoid talking altogether. It had been a while.

When you’re in my arms, all I feel is tenderness. How many years is it now? I still can’t wrap my head around us. Or around how changeable you are, how you can make yourself so warm and small, make me feel like I’m holding on to a kid or a puppy. As if you can just will your strength away when it suits you to seem helpless. Yet you never strike me as false. You really are all these different things, rock star, statesman, and puppy, simultaneously.

“I can take anything, Edge, but not being separated from you.” You whispered this into my shoulder. “If this is gonna be the thing that comes between us, then I don’t give a shit. Some other celebrity activist can step up. God knows there’s enough of them out there who need the attention.”

“They wouldn’t be able to do it, though. They’d be too adversarial. They can’t sit with a right-wing president and quote chapter-and-verse the way you can.”

“Well, fuck it. I’m done.”

“No you aren’t. Come on.”

“But…is it gonna break us up?”

I wasn’t sure what you meant—you and me, or the band. Either way, the words were a razor blade at my throat. “No B., of course not.”

We hadn’t moved an inch since you let me in. We were standing in your foyer, under the chandelier, you with your arms around my neck, playing at fragility, me with my hands roving up and down your back, straying to your hips, to your ass, because even after all this time, I can’t fucking resist you.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Edge—”

“You know what, let’s just not talk for a while.”

“Not talk? _Me?_ ”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m serious though.” I kissed the side of your head, the only part of you my lips could reach while you held my neck in a vise. “I’ve been traveling for nine hours. You have to either feed me or fuck me.”

“Oh, there he is. The inner brute that lives just under that placid exterior.”

“Yes, it’s true. I’m very brutish.”

You had put a light meal out on the coffee table, plus a bottle of white wine, and some glasses and plates. Very thoughtful of you, and just right. We never seem to eat at the dining room table when I’m here. Maybe you consider it your sacred family-space. You never said so, and I don’t want to think about it too much. Anyway, the couch is better for kicking off shoes, for sprawling out after we finish eating. For lying on my back and just holding you.

*

“So I’m really fucking things up,” you murmur. “All that beautiful good will from the tour and the Super Bowl. I’m squandering it, am I?”

_Yes,_ I think. But I can’t say so. Not with your sweet, warm weight on me, not with your old blue shirt barely held closed by a single button. Not with the taste of wine on your lips.

“No sweetheart. You’re trying to save lives. You’re trying to save everyone. I know that. We all know it. It’s just, you’re not careful with yourself. You don’t seem to understand that the world is an ugly place.”

“It isn’t.”

“It is. No one believes in goodness for its own sake. They just look for ulterior motives. It’s not the sixties anymore.”

“Good, ‘cause I don’t believe in the sixties.”

“Oh, do shut up.”

“Make me.”

You don’t know this, or probably you do, but I like to open my eyes in the middle of kissing you, because even at such close range, you’re gorgeous. A taxi-driver-in-Tel Aviv from one angle, a black-haired Molly Malone from the other. Even though I’ve been looking at you for years, it never gets boring. Your forehead, your eyelids with their delicate tracery of veins. Watching you kiss me back.

“Ah Bono. What _are_ you, anyway?”

“Who me? I’m a rough little man with delusions of grandeur.” You smile down at me. The look in your eyes is one of ownership mixed with desire, plus a teaspoon of exhaustion. “ _You_ , Edge, are a symmetrical miracle, a precision timepiece, a perfectly tuned koto, a pistachio-eyed Adonis—”

“Pistachio-eyed?”

“Yes. Like almond-eyed, only more green.”

How can I stay angry when I’m laughing, and you’re laughing too, right into my mouth, between kisses? In the fondest dreams of my youth, I never imagined that someone like you would say such beautiful words to me. I wish everyone on earth had someone like you. If not for a lover, then at least a friend. Really, what are you?

*

So it went like this. You were too tired to do much of anything. We got into bed, and you hung on to me until you fell asleep. I was happy to hold you, to kiss your forehead again and again. The other half of my soul, the angel I’m forever wrestling.

Now you’re fast asleep and I’m awake, perched in the armchair, watching your eyes dart under your eyelids as if you’re trying to outrun something. Maybe it’s the paps. Maybe it’s your father’s ghost. You always do this to me. I had an agenda when I got here, but all night I’ve been melting, little by little, like a sweet on your tongue. I want to slip back into bed beside you. No, I don’t want to slip in. I just want _in_ , I just want to be in there, jammed up against you like a wolf or a bear, a furry-muscled beast to keep you warm, to growl and claw at anyone who tries to get near you. Then I want to whisper all those fucking stupid pet names that take me over sometimes, as if my brain is full of nothing but children’s books and porn. _My kitten, my little bird, my angel-baby, my baby, baby, baby._ And I want to tell you I love you. I want to whisper it into your neck, into your mouth, your belly. I want to tell your feet and your knees.

But I’m still kind of pissed off at you.

Here’s a story just for you: years ago, when I was first separated from Aislinn, I slept with a fan. Nobody you’d know. Just a fan. A young woman. I had a policy that I would never do that. I would only get together with people who were on more or less on equal footing with me. Nobody under twenty-five, nobody who didn’t have a fairly interesting life of their own. Nobody who didn’t have their own money, their own interests. In short, nobody I could hurt by not being able to give myself over to them. So fans were out of the question.

Nevertheless. I was lonely as hell, and I didn’t think, at the time, I could ever have the person I really wanted. I was at a pub and this girl started talking to me and she was good looking and funny, and anyway what kind of fucking snob had I become? Who was I to judge whether or not her life was interesting, or whether or not she felt free enough to just have a good time and not make too much of it?

So I took her home and made love to her. Not in an offhand way or anything; I really wanted her to enjoy it. And I suppose she did, because, well, afterward she told me she loved me, and that I was her favorite, and she even cried. And I felt like a monster, like the worst kind of rock star asshole that I never wanted to be. But I couldn’t tell her I loved her too, could I? And so after a while she gave me this kind of terribly rational stare, right into my eyes, and said, “I told you I love you because it’s true. Your music is in my head all the time. But you don’t have to say anything back. You hardly even know me. I love you anyway, and it’s fine. This isn’t supposed to be a power struggle.”

She was right of course. This _isn’t_ supposed to be a power struggle. I don’t know why loving someone should give them power over you. And yet, doesn’t it feel that way sometimes?

You turn over and mumble. You’re arguing with someone in your sleep. I can tell. I hope it isn’t me. I also hope it _is_ me.

*

Three a.m., and some idiot is singing, downstairs, on the sidewalk. In _this_ neighborhood? He’s singing “The Foggy Dew” for chrissakes. I wake with a start, still slumped in the armchair. Why is the bedside lamp on? Why am I not in bed with you? What’s wrong with me? Ah, there’s your smile, the relieved one, the one I consider my own.

“Oh good, you’re still here.”

“Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?”

And now here’s the other smile, the hungry one, the one that skews to the left. The smile with the Eyebrow. “Still not gonna forgive me, Edge? Gonna quit the band? Gonna form a power-trio with Adam and Larry? Call it U3? Play a brilliant ten-minute cover of ‘Sunshine of Your Love?’ Gonna leave me to my horrible bloated Republicans? Leave me kissing their arses to keep a few hundred babies alive in some country none of them can even find on a map?”

“Sweetheart. No one’s leaving you.” At three in the morning, this feels like truth. “None of us. Ever.

“Then get back in here. Get in this bed with me.”

“If you insist.” I’m cold from sleeping in the chair, but oh, how warm you are. How you just fit in my arms. Damn you.

“Christ Edge, take off that beanie already. Your head is sexy. I wanna touch it.”

“If you take off this disreputable shirt.”

We shove our rejected clothing over the side of the bed. Then you wrap your arms around me so tightly I can hardly breathe. I don’t mind. We all have to die someday anyway. Crack my ribs, snap my spine. Let me fade away with your warm hands on me, with my lips pressed to your neck.

“I’ve missed you, Edge.”

“Yeah? In what way, specifically?”

“Specifically? Hm. Your collarbones, your knobbly shoulders.”

“Knobbly?”

“This amazing voluptuous ass that nobody knows about but me.”

“Well, _some_ people know about it besides you.”

“Ssh. Those people are not here right now. Anyway, mostly I miss having my tender flesh rubbed raw by your beard.”

“Likewise, buddy.”

“Oh, and also this.”

“ _God_ , Bono. Warn a person.”

“So gorgeous and hard.”

“Mm. For you.”

“For me?”

“For you.”

“I still think about you constantly, Edge. I mean it. When you’re not there. Whenever I get a quiet moment.”

I want to hear this of course, and yet I don’t. I think I might not want you to talk. It’s too much. I let my mouth travel over the surface of your skin so I don’t have to answer. Your throat, the furry hollow of your chest, the inside of your wrist. I want to skip ahead. I want your legs over my shoulders. I want to fuck you incoherent. You deserve a respite from words. You shouldn’t have to explain yourself to anyone. Especially not to me.

“I was thinking about you, Edge, down there in Washington, while I was being hustled around by the Secret Service. I was…oh.”

“Oh?” Now I _do_ want you to talk. I’m a hypocrite, sweetheart.

“Your guitar-hero fingers.”

“Do you like this?”

“Yes.”

“Were you thinking about me in the Lincoln Bedroom?”

“I was never in the Lincoln Bedroom.”

“But if you were.”

“I’d have been thinking about you in the Lincoln Bedroom, yes.”

“How about the Rose Garden.”

“Yes. I would absolutely think about you in the Rose Garden. I would lie down alone under the roses, naked, and think about you.”

“Mm… And the Oval Office?”

“I would thoroughly desecrate the Oval Office with my thoughts and deeds, for you.”

“If only your Republicans could see you now.”

“They’re not _my_ —oh fuck, I want you, love. Just touch me. Just touch me like that.”

“I will touch you any way you want.”

If only everything could be as simple as this, you sprawled on your back, me looking down at you. Your eyes, your parted lips, the beautiful heart-shape of your body, my hand moving on your cock, your hand moving on mine.

“Gorgeous Edge, I would like you to fuck me, if you’re amenable.”

“I am most amenable. Feel how amenable.”

“Oh, I feel.”

“Is there—?”

“Bedside table, top drawer, hidden discreetly under a draft of the testimony I gave before the House of Representatives.”

“I love it when you give testimony.”

“Edge.”

I go rummaging through the drawer. “You’re serious. You’ve got lube hidden under a speech. A long speech, looks like.”

“Look, if you want to fuck me, you have to get through my speech.”

“That’s you in a nutshell.”

“I’m sorry, The Edge.”

“You’ve nothing to be sorry about, sweetheart.”

“You sure about that?”

“I’m sure.” I whisper this into your ear, to make sure you understand. “I’m sure, B. You’re a good man. A beautiful man. And you’re mine. Aren’t you?”

“Yes, Edge. Yours.”

Your body ripples on the sheets. Every move you make sends a corresponding pulse into my fingers, and all through me. Your mouth, which has lately been set in a grim line, suddenly flowers again. Your lips are the color of blush wine, the color of a nipple.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, B.”

“Edge. You feel…” your voice trails off.

This warmth. I don’t want to move at all right now. I want to stay exactly where I am for as long as I can. Just like this. You seem to feel the same way. No urgency for the moment. We watch each other’s eyes; we are becalmed as two boats on a lake. This connection. It’s as rare, and worth saving, as any life.

You lay your hand on the side of my face. “Edge, I hope you trust me.”

“Bono.” You’re in this vulnerable position, asking me to trust you. “It’s alright. I’ve got you, no matter what. Anything you decide to do.”

“Good.” Your eyes close for a moment as we begin to move. “You’re a god, Edge.”

“You’re an angel.” You are, you are. I’ve wanted this, I’ve wanted you so much. “To think I almost stayed home.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Sweetheart.”

“Love.”

I can’t imagine, right now, that I would ever let the world come between us. I know it’s out there and so do you. We can’t leave it behind entirely, but we can have this. This room, this bed, warm and red as a mouth, holding us. You can have me, I can have you. The only man I’ve ever loved like this. And I _have_ loved you—boy and man. Your body warm and real all around me, your breath coming in quick bursts, whispered words I strain to hear through the blood crashing in my ears. I do trust you, of course I do. My beautiful friend with the good, pure heart.

Let me do this all night.

Let me keep going.

Oh let me. Let me make you come, let me see you come. Let me hear your beautiful voice. I love you.

_God._ I love you.

*

I still hear your voice. You're still talking about something. But I'm half-dreaming, immersed in hot bath water, expensive fragrances rising all around me. I'm holding you in my arms and I don't care about much of anything else right now. Finally. "Bono. Why are you talking.”

“Do I ever stop talking?”

“No, you talk through pretty much everything.”

“But you still love me.”

“Yes, I love you, even though I know you’re wrong.”

“Ah, you’re like the princess who lives on the hill.” Your eyelids flutter; you’re nearly asleep yourself. And yet. “You know Edge, it’s almost impossible to do something good for one person without stepping on someone else’s foot.”

“It’s okay, Bono. Most people don’t even want to try to be as good as you already are.”

*

Sunday morning on Central Park West, sunny and cold. I’m standing at your living room windows looking across at acres of trees, some bare, some still ablaze with autumn leaves. Dark shadows in between. A few early morning taxis on the street. A parked limo—not ours. People walking with fussy little city dogs. The sound of church bells.

You come up behind me, put your arms around me. Rest your head on my shoulder. I can feel the sunshine diffusing through my limbs. It’s hard to believe anyone could be contemplating war on a day like this, and yet…

“I want to be out in the world today,” you say. “I want to go out like normal people. Go out, eat breakfast someplace where normal people eat. No limo. No escorts. I want to walk with you in the park.”

I pull your hand up to my mouth, kiss your palm. “Well B., the more you hang out with presidents, the less ‘normal’ things are gonna get.”

“It’s the ‘new normal.’” You sigh. “Maybe we can go incognito. Maybe we can wear some stupid hats. You got a stupid hat, Edge?”

“You know I do.”

“Not the beanie. Oh, I know! I have a Yankees cap  _and_ a Mets cap.”

I slide out of your arms and turn around. You look more enthusiastic about your idea than is probably warranted. “Great, we can be rival baseball dads and _still_ get recognized.”

“No, for a _real_ rivalry I'd have to give you a Boston Red Sox cap. Look, just wait right here.”

You disappear into your bedroom, and I can hear drawers being pulled open and violently slammed shut. You emerge once more wearing a Yankees cap. It does not quite hide your distinctive hairdo. Or your distinctive anything.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Because you look just like yourself, only in a baseball cap.”

“Put this on.”

The Mets cap. “Have you gone to many baseball games here?”

“No.” You shrug. “People just give me things.”

“Of course.”

In the elevator, I find myself whistling the theme from “The Odd Couple.” Your laugh is unnecessarily huge and gratifying. The doors open on the ornate lobby, flooded with sunlight. The fiery leaves in the park seem only just out of reach. With a solicitous sweep of his uniformed arm, your doorman ushers us out into the day.


End file.
